The five-time Grammy winner served eight months at Rikers Island in 2010 for weapon possession charges
NEED TO KNOW
- Lil Wayne recorded music over the phone during his eight-month sentence at Rikers Island in 2010, he said while on the ‘Friends Keep Secrets’ podcast on Tuesday, July 21
- While serving time, Wayne said he developed a strategy for recording and staying up past bedtime
- He also revealed he the show he’d watch to make time go by faster
Lil Wayne is getting candid about his time spent behind bars.
During an appearance on the Friends Keep Secrets podcast on Tuesday, July 21, the five-time Grammy winner said he would still record music when he served an eight-month sentence at Rikers Island in New York in 2010.
“I went to the studio every night in jail,” Lil Wayne, now 43, said, clarifying that he would record over the phone.
“In my cell,” he added. “That meant everybody be quiet. I’m about to beat on this damn table.”
Lil Wayne explained that he had a 10:45 p.m. bedtime — but he would work around it by starting his phone conversations just before so he could keep recording.
Credit: Friends Keep Secrets/YouTube
“I would do it on purpose … That’s why everyone’s gotta lock in,” the “6 Foot 7 Foot” rapper said of his fellow inmates. “It was just me on the phone and [that way] I can actually record.”
When asked if anyone tried to overhear him as he was rapping, Lil Wayne said most people didn’t care what he was up to on the phone.
Asked if it was “the worst year” of his life serving time, Lil Wayne said that he had a special arrangement, given his fame, so it wasn’t all bad.
“Not at all,” he began. “But I have to give all of that thanks and credit to the people that were around me in there. They made it their job to make it easy for me.”
At first, Lil Wayne tried to make his days “shorter,” but eventually he gave in and started watching TV with everyone. When asked about his choice of show, Lil Wayne said it was Discovery Channel’s Naked and Afraid.
“You think they’re watching it because a female is in there naked. Nah, they know the storyline, they know everything,” he said.
Lil Wayne was released from his eight-month sentence for weapon possession charges in November 2010. The sentence followed his arrest in 2007.
In a February 2010 interview with Rolling Stone, he put the legal entanglement into perspective.
“I look at things as ‘Everything is meant to be.’ I know it’s an experience that I need to have if God’s putting me through it,” he said. “So I don’t look at it as wrong, I just … I damn sure don’t look at it as right, that’s all.”
Credit: Friends Keep Secrets/YouTube
In 2022, rapper Fat Joe got sentimental as he recalled visiting Lil Wayne in jail — and revealed the advice he gave him before going to jail himself.
“One of the saddest things I ever did was go visit Lil Wayne in jail. Not only that, but they had him chained up. Lil Wayne,” Fat Joe said on Red Table Talk. “They had him in shackles and all that. They had him like he was the killer.”
“So. I went to go see him,” he continued. “He’s my brother, man. He lives across the street from me in Miami — and so I’m walking into the jail, and I get a phone call. It’s Lil Wayne. I was like, ‘Yo Wayne, what’s up?’ And he was like, ‘I’m just telling you right now, be humble.’ And I said, ‘Well, how do you do it?’ and he said, ‘Just be humble bro.’ ”
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